Figure 1. egl-9 inactivation causes enhanced susceptibility to S. aureus-mediated killing.

A. egl-9(sa307) animals exhibited enhanced susceptibility, whereas egl-9(sa307);hif-1(ia4) mutants exhibited near wild-type susceptibility. Survival analysis: egl-9 Kaplan-Meier Median Survival (MS) = 62 h, Time to 50% Death by nonlinear regression analysis (LT₅₀) = 48.78 h, Number of animals (N) = 142, p<0.0001 (Log-Rank test, compared with wild type); egl-9;hif-1 MS = 68 h, LT₅₀ = 62.10 h, N = 122/2, p = 0.0030 (compared with wild type). B. vhl-1(ok161) and hif-1(ia4) animals exhibited near wild-type susceptibility. Survival analysis: wild type MS = 74 h, LT₅₀ = 67.03 h, N = 117/5; vhl-1 MS = 62 h, LT₅₀ = 61.86 h, N = 118, p<0.0001 (compared with wild type); hif-1 MS = 74 h, LT₅₀ = 64.77 h, N = 136, p = 0.0943 (compared with wild type). C. egl-9(sa330) animals and D. egl-9(ok478) animals exhibit wild type susceptibility. E. egl-9(n586ts) animals are hypersusceptible to S. aureus. Survival analysis: egl-9(sa307) MS = 43 h, N = 95/1, p<0.0001 (compared with wild type); egl-9;(n586ts) MS = 43 h, N = 96/15, p<0.0001 (compared with wild type); wild type MS = 50 h, N = 92/9. As all killing assays, this assay was performed at 25°C, which is the restrictive temperature of n586ts. F. Wild type, egl-9(sa307);crp-1::egl-9 (Intestinal egl-9), and egl-9(sa307);crp-1::gfp (Intestinal gfp) animals show that intestinal expression of EGL-9, but not GFP, rescues the egl-9(sa307) enhanced susceptibility phenotype. Survival analysis: wild type MS = 70 h, N = 108/7; Intestinal egl-9 MS = 61 h, N = 115/14, p<0.0001 (compared with wild type), p<0.0001 (compared with Intestinal gfp); Intestinal gfp MS = 48 h, N = 102/3, p<0.0001 (compared with wild type). Results are representative of two independent trials, performed in triplicate. Animals were subjected to cdc-25 RNAi to prevent reproduction, and subsequently transferred to S. aureus killing assay plates.